In the field of medical imaging, so-called hybrid instruments are enjoying ever increasing popularity. A hybrid instrument in this context is understood to be device which is capable of simultaneously or immediately successively obtaining image information about a patient's body (or another object examined) by way of two different image acquisition technologies.
Examples of such hybrid instruments are hybrid PET (positron emission tomography)/CT (computed tomography) instruments which have almost completely replaced the conventional PET system, hybrid SPECT (single photon emission computed tomography)/CT instruments, and most recently hybrid MR (magnetic resonance)/SPECT instruments. Advantages of such hybrid instruments are that a method having a high spatial resolution (MR, CT) and a method having high sensitivity (SPECT, PET) synergistically complement one another.
In such hybrid instruments, the problem occurs that the standardized file formats for respective individual instruments are not optimally suitable for such hybrid modalities. During the examination, for example, an MR-PET produces both PT and MR data which are in each case processed separately and stored in separate files.                There are currently a number of methods and approaches for bypassing the above problem:        the shots are in each case stored as separate PET or MR images etc. It is advantageous in this context that the image records can be processed further with the existing programs, that is to say, for example, displayed, diagnostically examined, printed out or processed. However, this approach has the problem that the “image fusion” that is to say information about the correlation between the two (or more) image records produced is lost or the image records must be recombined in order to restore such image fusion if it is wanted or required.        the various records can be stored combined in a special file format. This can be selected in such a manner that amalgamated images can be optimally processed; but then the conformity with existing standards and file formats is lacking and processing can only take place in systems which can use the selected format.        